Catholic religious sisters as a group are rightly revered for their faith and good works. If the Vatican were bullying them, or criticizing their organizations without cause, such moves would and should backfire.

But that’s not what’s going on. Contrary to the prevailing news media narrative about do-gooder nuns persecuted by mean old grumps in Rome, the Vatican’s recent moves to discipline dissident religious sisters are not groundless reprimands or patriarchal power grabs. Nor are they intended to paint all American religious sisters with the same broad brush.

Catholic officials are free to object when certain writings or actions misrepresent or contradict church teaching.

Both the Vatican’s proposed reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and its rebuke of a controversial book written by the theologian Sister Margaret Farley are targeted critiques intended to fulfill one of the Catholic hierarchy’s most vital functions: defense of the deposit of faith. That defense necessarily entails public clarification about what does and does not constitute authentic Catholic teaching.

It’s not surprising that leaders of the conference and ideological allies of Sister Farley would resent such clarification. It’s easier to complain about imagined persecution from the Vatican than to explain how the Leadership Conference of Women Religious – which was formed at the Vatican’s request and officially answers to the Vatican – can justify its decades-long drift from fundamental Catholic doctrine. On everything from the sanctity of human life to the centrality of Jesus and the validity of the Mass, the conference has been moving, as a keynote speaker at its 2007 national assembly put it, "'beyond the church' or even beyond Jesus," for decades. Many lay Catholics – not to mention those American religious sisters whose vibrant, growing and overwhelmingly youthful religious orders left the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in 1992 to form an alternative umbrella organization – believe it’s high time that Rome called the conference to account.

The same goes for Sister Farley’s book. American academics are free to write what they wish about Catholic teaching, but Catholic officials are free to object when those writings misrepresent or contradict church teaching. In doing so, they are serving Catholic parents and students who have a right to know which theological works faithfully represent Catholic doctrine and which do not.

Catholic religious sisters enjoy renown not only because of who they are as individuals but because of what they represent as a group: a public witness to the truths of the faith and the unity of the church. When their individual actions contradict that witness, church officials have a duty to speak up – even when doing so makes for problematic public relations.